


Up She Goes

by seeminglyincurablesentimentality (myinnerchildisbored)



Series: Rose Shelby vs. All the Bastards [4]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 01:04:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myinnerchildisbored/pseuds/seeminglyincurablesentimentality
Summary: Rose is at that awkward stage...somewhere in between Apache Chief and Flapper.





	Up She Goes

If the grown-ups were to be believed, Rose and her friends were simply the wrong age for anything.

They were too young to smoke or drink or get into dancehalls or leave school; if Rose had had a penny for every time a potential avenue of pleasure had been closed off on grounds of age, she’d have bought herself a horse long ago.

However, a new tune had recently entered the family repertoire of admonishments – you’re not a little girl anymore, Rosie – reserved for things like destroyed stockings, jumping into the cut fully clothes or being unable to consume jam on bread without ending up stained all over. And when James’ mum caught them, one fine Saturday morning, dismantling her washing line to use as a lasso for playing Indians, she accused them of being too old for these kinds of games.

To add insult to injury, when they grudgingly abandoned their ambitious prairie fantasy and went out the front to play football – because surely there was no wrong age for bloody football – Rose was rejected on grounds of not being enough of a boy, despite it being a known fact that there was no finer midfielder in all of Watery Lane.

“Go skipping, Rosie,” Johnno Taylor said with such an unbearable air of superiority that Rose had no choice but to knee him in the bollocks.

James and Billy followed in her furious wake as she marched off, breathless with laughter.

“Skipping’s not a bad idea, but,” James said when he could speak again.

“Not you as well.” Rose eyeballed him dangerously.

“Don’t be thick,” he said. “Rope’s a rope, isn’t it?”

“Now you’re talking.”

They found Helen and Alice swinging a substantial length of rope for a couple of Helen’s little sisters, disposed off said little sisters and took off towards the shipyard to get down to business.

After some fierce arm wrestling, James and Rose were declared chiefs of the warring tribes – Rose and Billy laying claim to Apache; James, Alice and Helen being the Sioux – and for the next hour or two, their battle raged without mercy. In the end, despite their best efforts, Billy and Rose found themselves tied with the skipping rope to an abandoned tethering post by the empty stable. James, flanked by his tribeswomen, slowly unsheathed his older brother’s ancient skinners blade.

“What’ll it be?” he asked darkly. “A life of slavery or a long, slow death?”

“We’re no one’s slaves,” Rose declared with as much dignity as possible, given their hopeless predicament.

The Sioux’s cruel laughter echoed across the plains as the chief stepped up to the totem pole, grabbing his captured enemy by the hair.

“Your scalp will take pride of place in my collection,” he growled, taking the Apache chief’s long braid into his free hand.

The Apache chief spat on his bare feet.

“Do your worst, cowardly son of a three-legged coyote…”

“Our dogs will feast on your entrails,” the Sioux’s second in command announced. “Your women won’t have enough of you to burn for a burial.”

“I’ll roam the everlasting hunting grounds with a smile,” the Apache chief laughed. “And I’ll be ready for you when you come to join me.”

The Sioux chief grinned.

“Scalp-scalp-scalp,” his tribe chanted.

“Manitou, we’re coming!” the Apache warriors cried, letting out a wild howl that somewhat startled the Sioux chief, unfortunately.

“Good fuck, James!” Helen shrieked.

James, knife in one hand and Rose’s braid in the other, stood frozen.

“Ah, Rosie,” he groaned, “I’m sorry…”

He dropped the knife and, somewhat stupidly, began to wind the braid around what little hair remained on her head.

“You’ll not be able to tie it back on, you thick ejit,” Alice shouted at him and Rose started laughing so hard it brought tears to her eyes.

“I’m sorry…” James said helplessly.

“You’ve fucking scalped me…” Rose could hardly get the words out between slaves of hysterics. “You bloody donkey…”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Will you fuckin’ untie us?” Billy snapped at him.

“Yea, yea, o’course…”

James and Helen fell over each other trying to undo the knot. By the time they were freed, Rose had gotten herself under control, more or less.

“Is it very bad?” she asked.

“No,” Alice said without blinking an eye. “You can barely tell the difference.”

This sent all of them into a collective explosion of hilarity.

“Give it here,” Helen said once they were done.

She took the unravelling snake of hair from James, braided the cut end back together and tied it with the ribbon from her own hair.

“Right,” she said. “Maybe if we make you some sort of headband…take your hair out, Alice, will you?”

Helen was very good with hair. Her own was almost down to her waist and she had more sisters than she knew what to do with, so if there was a snowball’s of salvaging this particular disaster, she’d be the one to put your money on. James watched anxiously as Helen worked to attach the braid to Rose with Alice’s hairband.

“That looks orright,” he said weakly when she was done.

“Yea?” Rose asked.

“It looks like someone’s stuck a horse’s tail to a coconut,” Billy snorted.

“Give us your cap, James,” Helen ordered.

“But-“

“Give it,” Alice rounded on him.

Grumbling, James dug his cap from his pocket and handed it over. Helen tied and tucked for a while before throwing her hands up.

“I’ll need a needle and thread for this,” she sighed. “Come on, Rosie, we’re going to mine.”

“But you’ll be able to fix it, you think?” James sounded as if he might buy Helen a bunch of roses.

“Well, she’ll have to wear a cap every day for the next two years, indoors and out…” Helen shook her head at him.

“What good’s that goin’ to fucking do?” James howled.

“Calm down.” Rose rolled her eyes at him. “Anyone’d think this is your problem. Christ. Keep your hair on.”

Alice fell on her arse laughing.

“God love ye,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s a shame you’ll be killed tonight, we'll miss you.”

“Ah,” Rose said as casually as she could. “If it’s not for one thing, it’s for another.”

#

By the time she climbed into the back of the car in the early evening, Rose’s bravado had diminished somewhat. That said, Helen had done a bang-up job sewing Rose’s braid to James’ cap; you’d have wanted to look very, very closely to be able to tell there was something amiss.

“Orright, Rosie?” Her father turned with a curious look on his face. “What’re you doing back there?”

“Charlie’s turn to ride up front,” she said with a shrug.

“Really?” Charlie shouted and scrambled over the seat into the front before she had a chance to change her mind.

“It’s your lucky day,” Rose chirruped.

She leaned her head against the window carefully, pleased she’d bought herself a little time. Charlie’d keep their father busy with his incessant chattering, he was good that way.

It wasn’t all bad, this hair situation, not if you really thought about it.

For a start, James was feeling so bad he’d be her indentured servant for an eternity.

And Rose wasn’t particularly fond of her hair, she wasn’t bothered one way or the other, not really.

Anyway, most women had their hair short now, didn’t they? Long hair was for little girls and – if the new tune was to be believed – she was no longer one of those; so maybe she was in fact too old for long hair.

Still, it probably wouldn’t hurt to delay discovery a little longer; so, Rose closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“Rise and shine…” Her father was tapping the peak of her cap. “Where’d you get this?”

“Two-up from James,” Rose yawned.

“It’s not sharp, is it?”

“No…” She brightened at this thought. “Can I-”

“In your dreams,” Tommy said with a smirk. “Come on, I’ll eat you and your brother both if I don’t get dinner soon.”

“I had dinner at Helen’s,” Rose said, keeping her lids low and her jaw slack. “I’m going to bed.”

Tommy frowned ever so slightly.

“You’re not sick, are you?”

“No, ‘m fine.” Rose climbed from the car and started towards the front stairs. “Just tired. Busy day…you know how it is.”

#

The next morning Rose stayed in bed until she heard the car start up out the front. It was Sunday, which meant the house would be empty, Frances and Charlie excepted; but Frances was going to daughter’s today and Charlie was tagging along to play with Frances’ grandson. Who the fuck knew where her father was off to, certainly not church, but Rose didn’t expect he’d be back any time soon.

By the time it was safe to come out, she’d had a fair amount of time to think the situation over.

The one thing she could not do, Rose determined, was to grass on James. It had, after all, been an accident. A fucking stupid accident to be sure, but an accident nonetheless. Not that James had anything to worry about if she did spill the beans, it wasn’t like her father was going to cut him open and chuck him in the cut; but James would have a heart attack if Tommy so much as looked at him sternly. James was not afraid of many things, but he was terrified of Rose’s father.

Rose wandered over to her wardrobe and surveyed the damage in the mirror on the door. It probably hadn’t helped that she’d slept on it. If someone had scraped a dead cat off the road, or a small dog, skinned it and stuck it on her head…it might have been an improvement.

That said, there was enough of it left to do work with.

Rose collected scissors from the chaos inside her desk drawer and made her way to the bathroom. On the way she met half a glass of whiskey, sitting all alone next to a vase of flowers on a table.

“How thoughtful,” Rose told the flowers, taking the glass in her free hand.

After all, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Very nearly twelve years old…nearly.

Rose sipped, shuddered and locked the bathroom door behind her. She filled the basin and stuck her head in.

Hair had to be cut wet, Rose knew that much.

Dripping all over the place she located a comb and dragged it through the wet mat on her head until it hung down flat. She picked up the scissors and nearly took her eye out trying the get the blades around her hair.

Louise Brooks, Rose decided. Surely she had enough hair still to do something like that.

She took another sip and started to chop.

#

By the time Rose was finished, the whiskey was gone and she was feeling rather good about everything.

She’d not done a perfect job – in fact she wasn’t at all sure what was going on in the back – but it wasn’t horrible.

It looked ridiculous while she was wearing a nightdress, admittedly. A grown woman’s haircut demanded a grown woman’s dress, after all.

#

There was a guest room closet full of dresses. Rose wasn’t entirely sure who’s they were, maybe her auntie Ada’s from when she used to stay over once in a while; or maybe Grace’s, though Rose didn’t see why her father would have kept them.

She selected something dark green with no sleeves but with a waterfall of fringe at the bottom to make up for it. There wasn’t a green headband to go with it, but there was a silver one, covered in sparkly bits some poor mongrel would’ve gone blind stitching on.

The dress was too long, the fringe nearly touched Rose’s feet. It was ticklish.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked the creature in the mirror.

“Who needs an occasion?” it asked back, raising its chin and winking at her. “Why, the best parties have no point at all.”

“Indeed, they don’t.” Rose smiled and handed over her invitation.

#

She strolled through the vast, empty big house with purpose. If nothing else, Rose knew how to throw a party.

Even though she knew he wasn’t in, Rose only dared to enter Tommy’s study on tiptoes. She collected a bottle of gin – because grown women drank gin, not whiskey – and a handful of cigarettes, a glass and a book of matches.

There was a phonograph in the corner of the sitting room, not that anyone ever used it and a small box of records gathering dust beneath it. Rose poured herself a generous measure of gin and sipped as she flipped through it, looking for something suitably festive. All of it was ancient, there wasn’t an Eddie Cantor in sight, not even a fucking Ivor Novello…

“Oh, hello…” Rose murmured.

For years, all through the war, her auntie Ada would introduce herself to anyone who’d listen as “the famous Ada, that’s Ada Shelby now, not Ada Jones”. It had driven Pol nearly round the bend, but the famous Ada – Shelby, not Jones – had been irrepressible even then.

Rose cranked the phonograph, gently placed the needle in the groove and waltzed away, putting her glass on the table to light a cigarette. Perhaps this business of being a grown-up was something one could get used to.

 _Come Josephine in my flying machine – going up, she goes, up she goes…_  
Rose took a proper swig from the gin this time, it was just as terrible as the whiskey. She danced across the room, like Ada used to do in the front room at number 6; she’d shove all the chairs out of the way and sing on top of her lungs. It wasn’t decent to have so much fun while men were off dying in the trenches (Rose had always thought that word sounded wet and cramped), but Ada couldn’t have given a flying fuck. She was off in the flying machine, Josephine could walk home.

 _Up, up, a little bit higher…oh! My! The moon is on fire…  
_ Rose tossed her cigarette into the cold fireplace and raised her arms, shoulders seesawing, brushing stray whisks of hair near her ears.

“One, two, now we’re off, dear,” Rose crooned. “Say, you pretty, soft, dear…Whoa! Dear, don't hit the moon…No, dear, not yet, but soon!”

She shimmied to the table for another taste of gin and the next time Ada Jones and Billy Murray chorused _up she goes_ , Rose obediently climbed onto the table and delicately jigged on across the polished wood on her bare feet.

 _Balance yourself, like a bird on a beam – in the air she goes, up she goes…_  
With outstretched arms, Rose balanced the length of the table. She reached the end, performed a tightrope walker’s elegant turn. Spinning, she caught sight of two shapes by the wide-open doors of the sitting room; the surprise of it nearly knocked her off the table.

Rose stopped dancing. She stopped everything for a second, including breathing.

Her father stood motionless as well, looking at her with a perfectly non-existent expression. He seemed to momentarily have forgotten about the woman next to him, who was also looking at Rose with a slightly open – and twitching – mouth.

_Come Josephine, in my flying machine! Going up – all on – goodbye…_

The music ended and the empty scratching of the needle on the final groove seemed loud enough to fill the world.

The clock on the mantle piece decided this was a great time to start chiming, announcing twelve noon; and possible Rose’s final hour. No one moved or said anything until the full dozen chimes had rung through the room.

“Why,” Rose heard herself say in a voice quite like her auntie Ada’s, “you’re just on time, darlings.”

Her father blinked.

Rose stepped off the table a little unsteadily, traversed the length of the rug and performed a wobbly curtsy in front of her guests.

“Rose Shelby, pleased to meet you,” she said and held out her hand.

The woman burst into laughter, took Rose’s hand and shook. Rose had seen her before, but she couldn’t quite place her.

“Jessie Eden,” she said. “And the pleasure is all mine, Miss Shelby.”

“Rose, please,” Rose smiled, swivelled round and beelined for an armchair.

Letting out a deep sigh, she let herself flop into it, her legs dangling over one arm, her back propped against the other.

“I’m exhausted,” she announced. “I’m having such a good time, it’s criminal.”

“I can see that.”

Her father’s voice was calm and quiet. He very deliberately walked over to the phonograph, lifted its arm and stilled the turntable.

“It’s orright,” Rose stage-whispered towards Miss Eden. “Next door’s too afraid to call the coppers…and it’s only early anyway.”

Playing army with her uncle Finn, when they’d been little, he kept ordering her on suicide missions. It meant that she’d no chance to make it out alive, he explained, so the point was to cause as much damage as she could before she snuffed it. That had been years and years and years ago; yet Rose had only just understood what he’d meant five minutes ago.

“Have you been drinking?”

Rose closed her eyes for a moment. Perhaps if she cried and apologised, he’d let her live…yea, like fuck he would. In for a penny, in for a pound. She craned her head and gave her father a sparkling smile.

“Not as much as some,” she said, nodding towards an empty corner. “Poor Georgie over there, he’s been sleeping it off since before supper, the two-pot-screamer.”

There was another peal of incredulous laughter from where Miss Eden had remained standing.

“Where’s Frances?” Tommy asked. He was pouring himself a drink now.

“At her sister’s,” Rose said. “The dear little boysie as well.”

Her father was coming towards her now, slowly, a like a bowlegged sort of panther. Rose swung her legs to the ground and got up as well, fringe tickling the top of her ankles. She stepped around the chair, keeping it in between her and the panther.

“Give us a twirl again,” Tommy said from the other side of the chair.

Putting on her most regal expression, Rose obliged.

“New haircut,” her father observed.

“Yea,” Rose said brightly, ignoring the cold sweat prickling down her back. “Sometimes a girl just needs a change, you know?”

“Sure.” Her father lowered his head slightly, all the better to look at her. “A change is as good as a holiday, eh?”

Rose swallowed.

“Depends on where you go,” she managed.

“Did you do that yourself?”

She nodded.

“That’s not a bad job.”

Rose and her father both turned to look at Miss Eden, who was leaning against the doorframe now, watching them like they were on a stage, like they were the best double act she’d seen in a while, actually.

“Thank you,” Rose said slowly.

The woman from the shipyard, that’s who she was. The one her father had dined and danced with in the shed while Rose watched through a crack in the wall and the storm was gathering around them.

“So, you still do have some manners. Good to see.” Her father’s low voice shooed away the image of dancers amongst crates filled with contraband.

“A hostess above all must be good to her guests,” Rose recited.

“It’s your party, is it?”

“Yea.”

It was like running towards the sheer drop of a cliff at full speed.

“What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion,” Rose said, her nerve beginning to desert her.

Her father’s stare could have cut the barrels of a shotgun in half. Rose didn’t know how she managed it, but she held it for what seemed several years. Even though his face gave very little away, she could tell he was just as incredulous as he was annoyed. She couldn’t blame him; Rose couldn’t quite believe what was happening either. Maybe she was possessed. Maybe the creature from the mirror had taken over her body. Tommy raised his glass slowly, never taking his eyes of Rose.

“What’s the theme?” Miss Eden interrupted the great armchair stand-off.

“Pardon?” Rose blinked at her in confusion.

“What’s the theme of your party?”

“Oh,” Rose regained composure and flashed what she hoped to be a charming grin. “Top Hats and Coconuts.”

Her father started coughing violently. The gin had to have gone down the wrong way. Miss Eden, however, looked utterly delighted, yet as though she might burst into tears any second.

“I see there’s more than one revolutionary in the family,” she said.

“Tradition’s important,” Rose said with a slight croak. “Now. If you’ll excuse me, Miss Eden, it’d be rude of me not to mingle…”

Sidestepping her father, who was still clearing his throat, Rose leapt towards the door and made a rather speedy exit. By the time she made it upstairs, the adrenalin and the gin and whiskey were shaking her guts up so much she barely made it to the toilet in time.

#

When her father came up it was nearly dark. Rose, who hadn’t realised that she’d been drunk at all until she had sobered up, was sitting on the bed, waiting, dressed in her own clothes now. Tommy stopped at the foot of the bed and looked down at her, hands in his pockets. She noticed he didn’t seem to be armed with a strap or anything.

“So.”

“So,” Rose echoed.

“That was quite something.”

Rose nodded slowly. Her father took his hands from his pockets and sat down on the end of the bed.

“D’you know what audacity means, Rosie?”

“No,” she said in barely more than a whisper.

“It’s when someone’s got more brass than brains,” he said. “What’s it called?”

“Audacity,” Rose said obediently.

“Audacity,” Tommy repeated. “Audacity can land you in a world of trouble. But-“ he held up his hand even though Rose hadn’t opened her mouth “- sometimes, not very often, it pays off.”

They sat in silence until Rose couldn’t take it anymore and cleared her throat.

“Did it?” she asked.

“Hm?” Her father raised an eyebrow at her.

“Did it pay off? My audacity.”

He left her hanging for an unreasonable amount of heartbeats.

“Yea, I s’pose it has,” he said finally. “Fair play to you.”

Rose stared.

“So…” she prompted after a moment.

“So, nothing,” Tommy said evenly. “But, if I were you, I’d ask Ada to even out the back a bit.”

“Bit wonky?” Rose bit her lip to keep her grin at bay.

“A bit.”

“Orright,” she said. “I’ll do that.”

Her father stood and gave her a small nod.

“Good night, Rosie.”

“Yea,” she said, still incredulous. “And sweet dreams to you, darling.”

“Don’t push it,” he advised.

Rose didn’t. She was old enough to know when to leave well enough alone, after all.


End file.
